The Park City Heights development has been in the works for nearly a decade, with only 20 of the 239 homes built. The City Council will receive an update—and an amendment request—on the project at their meeting on Tuesday. KPCW’s Emily Means has more.

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One item that City Council members will be tackling at their first meeting of the new year is an amendment to the Park City Heights Housing Mitigation Plan. Park City Heights developer Ivory Homes hopes to make headway on the public infrastructure component of the project, including roads and a water tank, which would require changes to the originally approved phasing and placement of units. Anne Laurent, Park City Community Development Director, says approval should speed up the project.

“At the end of 2015, I think it was December, we had a very detailed list of what size units, types of units and which lots they went on. [Ivory Homes has] looked at that a little more closely as they’ve continued to develop, and they’ve wanted to shift some around," Laurent said. "The number of units, the size of units, the pricing of units—none of that is changing; they’re just moving around which lots they’re going on so they fit better on those lots.”

Utah’s affordable housing crisis has come into the spotlight in recent years, but prices for the designated affordable units in Park City Heights were set five years ago. Since then, as anyone looking to buy a home can attest to, market rates and construction costs have increased—as much as 20% in the last year alone. To remain compliant with the resolution, Laurent says that the cost of affordable units in this project have remained the same, but she suggests that the increased price of the market-rate units likely pick up the slack from the affordable units.

“I will say that we never had a price restriction on the market rate, so I do think people see that the market-rate units are maybe higher priced than they anticipated back when this project was approved, but that’s the market driving those costs," Laurent said. "I will say that all the affordables are within the AMI restrictions of the housing resolutions, and there are different ones at play because the 79 units were fulfilling some IHC units, some additional city units required as part of the land sale, and then there’s the 16 units that are just because of the housing obligation for the market-rate homes that Ivory is building.”

“They are slightly behind, currently, of what they planned, which is eight to 12 units per year, but they also have a significant number of building permits in the works. And so we anticipate them very shortly here to be jumping ahead of and being ahead of schedule, and that’s where they’re planning to be.”

The City Council meeting starts at 6 p.m. on Tuesday at the Marsac Building.